Ukrainian defeat of Russia would have modest cost for the West

by Tom Maertens

Ukraine has come a long way since I visited the country as part of a U.S. government delegation in 1992.

That was following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Ukraine and the other republics had just become independent. Each of them set up its own barebones ministry of defense and began forming a national army.

In Ukraine, the ministry was a rundown former barracks with a handful of bare lightbulbs dangling over empty corridors. The entire staff consisted of three people — the minister, his driver and a clerk. But that was 50% larger than the ministry staff in Belarus, as we later discovered. There the entire staff consisted of two people — the minister and his driver.

From that inauspicious beginning, Ukraine is now a serious candidate for admission to NATO. The secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said recently that all NATO members have agreed Ukraine will eventually join, and the former secretary general, Anders Rasmussen, advocated security assurances and a path to membership.

At present more than 50 countries are providing aid to Ukraine. NATO members are considering informal security guarantees such as those given to Israel. Stoltenberg also suggested that NATO members may send troops in the interim.

NATO foreign ministers recently issued a statement expressing confidence that Ukraine’s NATO membership would “greatly contribute to the Alliance’s security and would help the Russian society to finally get rid of the imperial dreams.”

To refresh, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic officially joined NATO in March 1999. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined in 2004.

Despite warnings from Putin that arming Ukraine would lead to world war, Biden recently approved another $300 million military aid package for Ukraine. It includes munitions to bolster Ukraine’s air defense capabilities against Russian assaults, including munitions for Patriot missile batteries as well as Avenger and Stinger air defense systems, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), anti-armor rounds, unguided Zuni aircraft rockets, night vision goggles, about 30 million rounds of small arms ammunition and an undisclosed amount of other artillery rounds.

Counting the latest aid, the United States has committed more than $37.6 billion in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine since Russia attacked on Feb. 24, 2022.

Moscow has followed a much different path than Kiev since the breakup of the Soviet Union, from open cooperation to hostile confrontation.

Biden’s decision last month to help Ukraine obtain F-16 fighter jets crossed another Russian red line that Vladimir Putin has said would transform the war and draw Washington and Moscow into direct conflict.

Most Americans are unaware that the United States provided $28 billion in aid to Russia between 1992 and 2005 — according to the Congressional Research Service — for economic support and to fulfill various arms control obligations undertaken by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. That included dismantling or destroying military equipment and securing “loose nukes” to keep them away from terrorists and nuclear blackmailers.

As a result, Moscow gave us access to some of its most sensitive facilities. I visited several nuclear weapons storage sites to assess what type of assistance Russia would need. I recall two sites (near Murmansk and near Vladivostok) that had nothing more than wooden doors and simple padlocks — essentially no security at all.

With U.S. assistance, Russia destroyed 2,531 missiles, and decommissioned more than 1,300 WMD delivery systems (silos, mobile launchers, submarines, and strategic bombers); it also destroyed chemical and biological weapons.

Ukraine’s share of the Soviet arsenal included 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads and thousands of tactical nukes. Under pressure from the United States and others, Ukraine transferred all nuclear weapons to the Russian Federation by 1996, in return for reactor fuel for peaceful uses and security assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Russia signed several agreements committing in writing to respecting Ukraine’s borders, which Moscow has violated repeatedly.

A study by the Center for European Policy Analysis found that congressionally approved funds to support Ukraine last year amounted to 5.6 percent of U.S. defense spending, while resulting in a significant degrading of Russia’s military with no “boots on the ground.”

That assistance has enabled Ukraine to destroy almost half of Russia’s conventional military power, including some 2,000 tanks and armored vehicles and killing or wounding around 200,000 Russian troops, according to The New York Times. Other estimates are much higher, which would threaten the stability of Putin’s regime. Some analysts contend that with enough weaponry, Ukraine could defeat Russia, a strategic victory for the West at very modest cost.

Tom Maertens had oversight responsibility for nuclear, chemical and biological issues in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and in the White House.